Wow! I was sure when I came back here, I was going to see that it’s been a year or more since I last posted…what a surprise it was to see that it’s only been about 8 months. There have been an huge number of really significant things that have happened.

It’s incredible to believe that just 8 months ago, our lives were “normal”, a little complicated, but still “normal”. It all started around the end of August or beginning of September. Ma’s health started to decline more quickly, and her memory was getting worse. After the third call in 10 days, I was getting really tired of getting tear filled, panicked calls from Ma saying that she broke the toilet (she forgot how to flush), the house is flooding (left the tap on while she was outside for 10 hours), the TV won’t work (got switched to a different channel and she couldn’t put it back or the other time when she was trying to turn it on with the volume button) or my absolute favorite one, the phone is broken. Yes, you read that right, she CALLED me, on the only phone she had, to tell me that the phone was broken. Yeah! I know… that one’s right up there with her telling people, IN ENGLISH, that she can’t speak English.

The final straw came when she called me to tell me that there was water all over the basement because she had physically turned the tap in the kitchen, to a different position. We weren’t home when this call came, we were 8 hours away up north. Thank the heavens above for Bob. He went over and had a look around. Yes, there was water all over the basement, but that was because the hose from the central air has mysteriously jumped out of the laundry room sink, and was now draining directly onto the floor. Moving the tap in the kitchen had absolutely nothing to do with the water in the basement.

When we got home from up north, B and I went over for a visit, and I told her she needs to make a choice between two options. Either she goes to a nursing home or we sell both her house and mine and buy a new one together so I can take care of her full time. Visibly upset, she asked me if there were any other choices. My simple reply was that she could die, but she wasn’t allowed to do that until she emptied all the junk out of her house! (Now, you have to understand that the relationship I have with my grandparents, saying that kind of thing is totally normal and usually laughed about. And she laughed this time too.) With some mumbled swearing, she finally replied and told me to sell the houses and so began the hurricane that would last until the end of the year and beyond.

Ma had lived in that house for 43 years. That’s A LOT of time to collect and gather things, so before I even thought about calling Tracy (the real estate agent), we set to emptying as much out of there as we could. We figured maybe 3 or 4 runs to the dump and a few runs to the thrift store, and the house would basically be empty. How wrong we were!!!

I started packing and purging the next day and after two weeks of working everyday, there was a huge pile of boxes, but you couldn’t tell where everything had come from because there still wasn’t an empty space in the house. The fact that Ma was “helping” was really slowing me down too, and she wanted to keep everything. I kept telling here that she can’t keep everything because we are putting two houses together into one house and I would actually like to be able to keep some of my things too. She just couldn’t wrap her head around that, and so I resorted to getting rid of things sneakily when she wasn’t in the room. Yet, by the middle of September, other than the pile of boxes and one empty closet, you couldn’t tell I had done a single thing. Even still, I called Ms. Tracy up and told her to come and have a peak at the two houses to tell me what she thinks they can sell for, and then to help us find a new one.

**Side note here: Tracy has been my real estate agent from the time I moved out on my own when Ryan and I separated, and every purchase and sale since. When searching for the house that we were now going to be selling, that poor woman had to have travelled around every nook and cranny of Southern Ontario, looking at every house that was within my very limited budget. We ended up viewing over 100 houses before I finally gave up and bought the one I did. She sure earned her money that time. So, when I called her in September, I’m sure she was trying to find a way out of having to look at all the houses in Ontario with me again, and I’m surprised she was willing to take us on a clients.**

After discussing what we would list the houses for, and deciding that we were going to go ahead, we set up times for photos to be taken and the sign to be put up. In the meantime, I found a house that we thought would fit our needs, so we went up to see it. That house was located in Arnprior, Ontario, had a granny suite in the basement, sitting on 60 acres of land, and a good $100K below what we were willing to spend, so we went to see it.

Straight away when we got there, Bill and I had a funny feeling about that place, something wasn’t right. The first thing we noticed was that the driveway had a sliding gate across it, topped with barbed wire along with a private property/no trespassing sign. There was only a single house across the road from it and no other neighbors for at least a kilometer in any direction. Ok, that can be explained away. But that was just the beginning!!

We went inside…the tiny part of the basement that wasn’t the granny suite, was full of decorated and fully setup aquariums and terrariums…but they were empty. Where are all the snakes and other critters that were supposed to be in there? Next we went to look at the granny suite, what we saw, I would in no way, shape or form, call a granny suite. It was tiny, unfinished and just not habitable…I wouldn’t even let my dogs down there!! Seeing that, we were pretty sure that we were going to be passing on the house, but decided to look at the main floor and the property anyway.

The main floor was nice, newly redone except for the bathroom fan that didn’t work. The kitchen was modern, bright, and bigger than the one we had, but not big enough. That’s when we noticed a wasp. That happens, no big deal right? It’s the end of summer and it’s starting to get chilly, so they’re looking for somewhere to live. One little yellow jacket is not a deal breaker….but his two or three dozen buddies are!!!! Tracey was even taking pictures to show the listing agent because this was completely unacceptable. At this point, we KNEW that we weren’t just walking away from this property, we were going to RUN away from it. But just for shits and giggles, we went to look around outside.

We wanted to see the big shop and the apple and pear orchards that were talked about in the listing. Turns out, the shop was indeed large, but one strong sneeze and it would have fallen down around you. The apple and pear orchards? Two trees of each…that’s what they were calling an orchard. Out we went through the barbed wire fence and we didn’t so much as look in our rearview mirrors at that place.

We were disappointed, but we knew we weren’t going to be able to find what we were looking for, easily. I wasn’t worried though, the houses were not listed yet, and we were fully expecting it to take a couple weeks for them to sell because of their condition, so I lots of time to look and find something that was perfect. The following week or so was spent with me scouring the MLS website, trying to find THE house. If you recall, this is when the housing market started to slow down, resulting in far fewer houses being put up for sale. I looked and looked, used all different search words, raised the maximum price we were willing to pay…everything, and nothing was coming up.

That weekend (Sept. 16-17), the pictures and videos were taken, asking prices and closing dates were decided on, and contracts were signed. Both houses were set to go live on the MLS site on Sept. 21. Now I was starting to get a bit anxious that were going to end up homeless somehow.

Monday morning had me sitting at the computer again, looking at all the same houses that I’d already seen and hoping that something new would pop up. I got frustrated that it was all just the same things I’d looked at 42 times already, so I pushed the mouse away angrily and stood up. That’s when I realized that moving the mouse somehow made the map on the screen zoom out and show more areas of Ontario, areas that we weren’t looking at…and there was a picture of a house, I had to look at that house.

The picture made me think of a chalet, with the dark brown trim and white walls. I started looking at the pictures, and liked what I saw. I REALLY liked what I saw. I sent a screenshot of the location dot to B, no info about the house or anything, just where it was, and asked him if it was too far from where we wanted to be. He looked at the map, and replied simply, depends on the house. I messaged Tracy right away and set up a viewing for that Saturday September 24. Since we were going to be driving that far, Tracy found 3 more houses that she thought might work and we made appointments to view them as well.

Wednesday morning, September 21 arrived and both houses were scheduled to have a number of viewings already on that very first day.

And that’s when everything went crazy!!

Stay tuned for part 2, where you will wonder how I didn’t completely lose my mind!!